You are in a social setting with a fairly large group of people you don’t know. As conversations progress everyone decides to go around the room sharing what they do for a living. Your turn arrives and you proudly say you are an interpreter by trade. Silence fills the room and then someone in the back says; You can make a living doing that?

Sign With Me, a social cafe in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo Japan takes food orders in sign language. The signing cafe just opened last year December, 2011. All six employees communicate with customers in sign language. And if there’s a customer who does not know sign language orders are taken in writing or from pointing on the menu board.

Cafe owner, Masahiro Yanagi, who is a Deaf Japanese man, opened the cafe with several goals. Most important goal Masahiro says is to make delicious cakes and soups for everyone. He also decided that his cafe will hold a theme that includes sign language.

Many cafes in Japan and around the world too are theme cafe shops. And because cafe shops are places where people stop for a light meal or a drink. And often time a cafe is a place where people meet for a couple of hours for…